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$114 for a beer? These upscale brews are worth sharing

Toronto bars are hoping to turn tastes with large-format table bottles, and the LCBO is getting in on the trend with a limited supply of $114-a-bottle Samuel Adams Utopias.

Tomas Morana pours Goods from the Woods, a beer that sells for $37 a bottle. Birreria Volo at 612 College Street caters or pours to the popularity of big beers — sharing bottles with even bigger price tags. (Steve Russell / Toronto Star) | Order this photo

By Andrea YuSpecial to the Star

Fri., Sept. 23, 2016

Inverted wine glasses hang above the bar at Little Italy’s newest watering hole but there isn’t a bottle of red or white in site. Instead, the large bottles that line Birreria Volo’s shelves are filled with specialty beers — notably sours, farmhouse ales and Belgian-style brews.

One example of this is the Iris, a light and tart beer from Belgium’s Cantillon Brewery that has a complex flavour profile of wood, hay, lemon and stone fruit. It’s naturally fermented using wild yeast found only in the air along the Zenne River, which runs near the brewery. Rare ingredients and a laborious brewing process, which includes two years of aging in oak barrels, contribute to the beer’s high menu price — $60 per 750 mL bottle.

Like fine wines, large-format specialty beers can also run the spectrum of price, quality and exclusivity. Only 750 bottles Samuel Adams’ Utopias, priced at $114.95 for 710 mL, will be available at the LCBO starting from Sept. 23. “Beer drinkers have come to expect us to release a very limited number of (Utopias) bottles every other year,” says Jim Koch, founder and brewer of Samuel Adams. “It’s really for the diehard craft beer fanatic.”

Utopias is made with a blend of beers — some of which have been aging for 23 years — and Koch recommends enjoying its earthy wood, toffee and raisin notes at room temperature from a snifter glass. At Birreria Volo, wine glasses are used to serve many of its unique brews.

Birreria Volo is just one of several bars in Toronto with pricey, large-format bottle beers on their menus. (Steve Russell/Toronto Star)

Large-format bottles of fine beer such as Cantillon’s Iris are excellent for sharing. Its dark green, curved glass bottle has a corked top that’s opened with a touch of pomp and circumstance. “All of a sudden you’ve got a table of people drinking a beer like you’d be splitting a bottle of wine,” Morana says.

Birreria Volo is just one of several bars in Toronto with pricey, large-format bottle beers on their menus. At Wvrst, the German beer hall-style eatery on King St. W., affordable draft pints are still the overwhelming preference but general manager Bram Zimmerman has noticed interest in finer shareable beers steadily increasing since the restaurant opened in 2011.

“We’ll get groups of four or five people that will come in for a night and instead of getting a round of shots and spending 40 or 60 bucks, they get a really nice bottle so that everybody can sip and enjoy it,” Zimmerman says.

For the average beer drinker that’s used to paying $7 or $8 for a 500-mL pint, the higher price tag of these nicer brews can be hard to swallow. But there are more affordable ways to enjoy fine beers. A six-ounce pour from a select range of Birreria Volo’s specialty bottles starts at $9.75. Few, if any other, bars in the city offer its finer bottled brews by the glass and Morana hopes it will be the gateway that leads curious beer drinkers to order nicer bottles. “As soon as someone tastes the beer, they go ‘okay now I get it. I see the value in this.’”

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Finer beers are great for sharing. Grab a group and try these brews available in Toronto.

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